A recent demand in the automotive industry is the replacement of airbags traditionally located in the vehicle steering wheel and dashboard to protect its front seat occupants from frontal impacts with airbags arranged on the vehicle roof, although commercial vehicles in which the replacement of the steering wheel airbag with an airbag arranged on the roof has been carried out are still not known.
Therefore it is demanded to free up the space occupied by an airbag in the steering wheel and dashboard in order to be able to use it for other purposes, but their replacement with airbags arranged on the roof has several difficulties in achieving similar functions.
In this sense several proposals are known in the prior art, particularly the following ones.
U.S. patent application 2004/0251668 discloses a valid deployment method for airbags arranged on the roof intended to protect the vehicle driver, allowing control of the cushion deployment path and improving its performance in “out of position” (OOP) cases.
U.S. patent application 2004/0090050 discloses a system of anchoring an airbag to the roof header in an environment including the roof headliner, central console and sun visors. The roof headliner is anchored to the roof header through a frangible screw which, when it breaks in deployment, acts as a cushion exit port. The roof headliner is secured to the roof header through a tether preventing it from coming loose during deployment. Anchoring of the sun visor is carried out through a visible plastic header that does not move during deployment.
Despite the existence of solutions such as those mentioned, the automotive industry requires roof airbags offering new solutions for two of their main drawbacks: cushion deployment path control and fixing of its different components to the roof. The present invention focuses on this requirement.